Like a sweet spring breeze after a long, cruel winter, Cory Hanson’s blowing through town again. And like the wind, I Love People comes from parts unknown. Need a ride? Long as you’re ready to find yourself wherever it dies down, jump on!
Despite all the complications of life here in Central Casting 2025, Cory and the boys are happier than ever to be playing music at its most beautiful for ALL the people: eminent hipsters bellied up to the bar alongside the ropers, riders and all the other jokers for whom freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose or do.
Followers of Cory’s twin arcs as solo singer and Wand member will be intrigued to learn that the lineup here is the same band that recorded last year’s Vertigo. Yep, Wand — their Masters of Unbounded Space robes traded in for Wrecking Crew trucker’s caps, as they reel out licks both tasty and smooth, like chopsmeisters of yore. That’s Robbie Cody co-producing behind the desk, Evan Backer playing bass and arranging strings and horns, Evan Burrows on drums and percussion and Cory on piano, guitars and voices and songs.
Travelin’ light and puttin' up dry, I Love People bugs out to the what-the-fuck?-ness on the edge of town spied now and again on Cory’s previous solos, Pale Horse Rider and Western Cum. Here though, the simmering shades of Rider’s quiet horror and the bursts of Cum’s cartoonish, gun-slinger bravado have given way to an ever-more impartial view of life on the ground, tinted in gossamer sepia and other nostalgic tones. Written over the past several annums, Cory’s songs ensnare the 70s singer-songwriter in a feedback loop, drawing additional inspiration from the indelible everyman melodies of the American Songbook. With gilded threads and emboldened needling, I Love People’s songs are rendered with immediacy and a deep-pile Hollywood production sound that radiates affluence and comfort, even in the darkest and coldest nights way out beyond the range of any signal.
Placed and displaced among gorgeously outfitted musical arrangements, I Love People’s people are kin to their threadbare folk forbears. Song by song, their occupations, social positions and dispositions unravel like silk into the wind. While they perform, Cory loiters backstage, gently pulling at the curtain to reveal silly details hidden in plain sight inside America’s broken heart. It doesn’t come as a surprise, and it’s not strictly funny, either: a giddy mash of the two, the delirium that comes from finding what you think is "true" is someone else's "false." When maps won’t help you find out where you are anymore, you’re as normal and horrible as the next person, playing out your days in a place of constant activity with your parallax view progressing invisibly into a limbo beyond the horizon. That’s your freedom for you, and it might be more sad, more terrifying — if it weren’t so much fun!
Even though their subject won’t stop squirming, Cory and his merry men have constructed a timeless still life with I Love People, simply by living for the fun and love of it all. Just like the rest of us!
